News Corp set to take 49 pct stake in Yankee channel - source

By Ronald Grover

Nov 18 (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is
expected to announce this week that it will acquire a 49 stake
in the YES Network from the New York Yankees baseball team and
its partners, in a deal that would value the sports channel at
$3 billion, a person with knowledge of the talks told Reuters.

The deal is structured to allow News Corp to eventually
acquire control of the channel, which broadcasts Yankees
baseball and Brooklyn Nets basketball games to 15 million
subscribers, said the person, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because the deal has not been announced.

News Corp will share in the profits, according to the New
York Times, which first reported details of the agreement. News
Corp will have an option to increase its stake to 80 percent in
three to five years, the newspaper said, citing unidentified
sources.

Yankee Global Enterprises, the parent company of the
Yankees, owns 34 percent of YES. Another 40 percent is owned by
Goldman Sachs and Providence Equity, with the remainder owned by
former owners of the Nets.

A News Corp spokeswoman declined to comment. YES
representatives were not immediately available for comment.

The deal would allow YES to raise the $2.99 monthly fee per
subscriber it currently charges cable and satellite operators to
carry the channel, said the person. News Corp would negotiate on
its behalf with the operators as part of a larger package of
sports channels.

News Corp, the media company that owns Fox Broadcasting and
The Wall Street Journal, owns or holds stakes in 20 regional
sports networks, providing sports programming to more than 67
million subscribers.

Initially, the Fox sports channels are not expected to
provide local or national sports programming to YES, or to
manage the channel, the person said.